It is sunny and hot and not a cloud in the sky. Hubs is out fishing for the day, and I am alone with my sewing machine. I get to look out my window at the small garden where the corn is higher than an elephant's eye. It is glorious. I am grateful.
Do any of you remember 40 some years ago when our then President Jimmy Carter was handling the hostage crisis? It was a scary time.
Hubs and I were newlyweds, and we did not have a clue. In the Pacific northwest 1 out of every 4 men was out of work. Gas went from .69 a gallon to $1.20 something. We all drove big a$$ 8-cylinder cars. Food of any kind went up anywhere from 25-50%. Hubs was out of work for more than 10 years.
Now he did work some fighting fire in the summers, but the Forest service was always very careful to lay people off before they could collect unemployment. You could not get any help with food stamps or heat if you were married. You had to be a single mother for help.
Now I could always find work, but Hubs could not. It was a nightmare for both of us. I remember Hubs applying for a job as a dish washer with three other men and two of them had PHD's. In our small resort town 3 out of 4 men were out of work. Hubs went out and cut Christmas trees with a permit and sold them to a Christmas tree outfit. We also had our first baby. Why I got pregnant at that time is a mystery to me. I was very, very sick and I had to work. We could not afford gas, so I walked the 1/2 mile to work and back even when it was just above zero. We walked everywhere.
Mc Donalds had a contest going. It was trivia which both Hubs and I are good at. If you answered the first question right, you got a free soda, then the second question a free fry, the third a free sandwich. If you missed the second or third, you received nothing. So, you had to be careful.
We would spend hours in the library on Saturday's researching the answers we did not know, so we could have lunches out the next week. We moved home two weeks after our eldest was born and lived with either, his or my parents for over a year. Hubs went to a graduate program in Logging engineering at Oregon state and I stayed with my parents and worked as a waitress. My parents hated hubs and having him live there was just not going to work.
He was able to get money to go to school (he already had a bachelor's degree in Fire science Forestry) and then fought fire all summer. We had been married by this time for 3 years and I decided to go back to school; and finish my college degree. There were no food banks, we just learned to survive the next 4 years, while the economy tried to recover. I double majored in History and software eng. Still no full-time job for Hubs. You had to be ethnic or a woman to get a forestry job. Forest service secretaries were being sent back to college by the government so they could take jobs as they would fill the quota of women working. It was a nightmare.
I learned to be very frugal, and I hated it. In fact, I resented it. I still look back on those years with distaste. I am just starting to see the blessing they were in teaching many skills. I see so many similarities in today's world. Now you would think that living through that and knowing how to live frugally would have set me up for financial success, right?
Wrong!!!! I just learned to be very resentful, and I used CC's to live beyond my means for the next 23 years. I used the equity in our homes to borrow money and paid off my debt only to do it again. There was never enough. I robbed Peter to pay Paul for years. All the years we were raising our girls. Hub's never made over $40,000 a year. I never took a full-time job and I should have.
I don't reiterate these things because I am proud of them, but because I finally figured out how to become frugal again. I do think I was always frugal in most ways, but that did not keep me from using CC's to get what my kids wanted, or I wanted. Finally, after the middle daughter got into college and I was diagnosed with SRA (synovial rheumatoid arthritis) I realized I was going to have to slow down or die.
Something had to change. I started reading PDF blogs, I read Rhitter's blog first and we are still together, trying to become debt free and we will. I became friend's' with Sluggy and she was so much help. She is someone I look up to (well, actually down to as she is shorter than I am). So many blogs with great ideas in how to save money and not debt. It has been 11 going on 12 years of blogging and learning and perfecting my frugal skills to bring me to where I am today. Now that I am proud of...
Thrifty Thursday:
1. saved all my spare change
2. saved all my $5.00 bills now have $810.00 total so $55.00 this week
3. saved a $1, $5, $10, $20 bill
4. only spent under $6.00 for groceries this week
5. ate all meals at home
6. used food from freezer and pantry for all meals
7. used lettuce, green beans, peppers, cucumbers from our garden which is NOT producing as well as I would like
8. downloaded receipts to fetch (I will use points to buy gift cards at Christmas)
9. took neighbor to food bank and received a load of produce that would have been thrown away
10. Used coupons at Joanns
11. Used lace I saved from a wedding alteration to fix another alteration and made additional money
12. found the least expensive place to buy gas
13. made homemade pies for a BBQ and church funeral only bought 1 lb. of strawberries.
14. made extra piecrusts to keep in freezer saves time and money
15. lived in a way that was generous to others as Karma and goodwill bring about blessings.
16. had hubs take car fishing as it uses less gas.
17. took care of neighbor's cats and was gifted 4 jars of delicious jam
18. keeping up on freezer and fridge to make sure nothing goes to waste
19. feeding food scraps to chickens
What did you do this week to be frugal? Did you ever have years of stupid money habits you overcame? If so, how? Tell me I am not the only idiot out there....please.
Have a great and productive day staying positive while you are in the negative.
Kim
Hi. Great blog topic for today. I wasn’t super crazy but didn’t really figure out about saving for retirement until my early 50’s. We did save money, but a 10% savings rate isn’t going to feed the bulldogs in retirement. A friend at work introduced me to Dave Ramseys books and off we went. I retired at 59 and those prior nine years were a success because paying off our debt was our number one goal. And it worked. Plus our living costs dropped over that time period (to save more) and that set us up perfectly for a lower cost of living in retirement. Just out of college I was dead broke for three years, I used 100% of what I made to payoff my college loans and I lived with my family, and I resented having no money…and today I grind my teeth when the government says it’s needs to cancel student debt. Argggh, will I get a check back for my three years of doing nothing except debt repayment. Guess not…End of rant ;). Love your blog! Hilogene in Az.
ReplyDeleteI know, as so many colleges accepted students they should not have. Encouraged them to borrow and they never got degrees and now we are supposed to help them out. It never ends. I know those loans and I only had one were very hard to pay off. My kids are paying off their loans and it was hard.
DeleteThanks for sharing your story -- it will help someone!!! I think we all had our moment in the sun that we spent too much. Learned hard lessons.
ReplyDeleteI remember those days - seems so many have forgotten, because all they do is moan and groan about today's situation. It is nothing new for those of us who are a certain age.
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice evening.
It isn't. It is the same thing we already lived through.
DeleteI never had enough money to go crazy when married or after. But, the lessons from before marriage have been perfected now, so that being frugal is not a hard thing. I did catch hell for putting us in debt with wild spending for things like cloth diapers, cloth I bought to clothe us all, etc. There is more! Nowadays, I am more frugal in some ways, but disability has slowed down my sewing and canning.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to say--we never had cc debt. We had mortgage and some years a car payment. We bought a new car and kept it for seven years. Both of us were against cc debt. After divorce I had a cc for two years. It was two years ago that I acquired a debit/cc. I never use it as a cc, just debit card.
DeleteGood for you, you are smarter then me.
DeleteBeen there, done that, as you. Paying enough on the Sears CC so i could charge a tank of gas later in the month. Debt-free, now, and will not go into debt for any reason! Hard lessons but you figure it out IF you want to!
ReplyDeleteDebbie
We all have our stories don't we?
DeleteThank you for the shout out! You've been my cheerleader, prayer warrior and good friend. Together, we will get rid of this debt. As for my story, I had a frugal aunt, who always said, live within your means. But like you, I resented being told how to live my life, and lived beyond my means. Now, I am paying for it. I am trying to be a better example for my daughter (she's trying).
ReplyDeleteIt has been a long slow process, but we will get there.
DeleteI really didn't have years of being foolish with money. When Harvey and I got married I ended up pregnant right away and unable to work. We lived in a small village where he grew up and so we started a garden right away. Then within a couple of years the factory he worked in shut down and he was out of work for almost a year. I thank God every day for wonderful neighbours and family that helped us out during that time.
ReplyDeleteWhen he did manage to get a new job we lived pretty much from pay cheque to pay cheque but did not go greatly into debt. Once he started getting promotions and raises the debt was paid off and I started setting money aside to pay off the mortgage as soon as possible. Once that was paid off money was set aside for savings and retirement. My dad always said that our government pension plan would never support us so we needed to save.
Now being frugal is just a part of life and I keep looking for new ways to make the game more interesting.
God bless.
I wish I had been as smart as you. We really started to save money about 20 years ago from Hub's pay checks. We took every raise he got and put it in savings. This gave us a nest egg besides his retirement. We have not had to touch it, but sure glad it is there.
DeleteWe've had tight moments, scary moments, but managed as well. It's the same, but different for our kids I feel. You were willing to drastic things, but I don't think our kids are, not like we just got on with things. I mean look at how you regularly fill in, keep child care costs at bay. What would they do if you weren't there? Scary to imagine. I do other things that smooth life out for mine, and someday will likely do the childcare help too.
ReplyDeleteWhich is exactly why we do this. Our kids are in for a hard 8-10 years before this economy comes round.
DeleteGreat blog
ReplyDeletePlease read my post
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing! What an experience!
ReplyDeleteI don't remember much about the 70's, and I didn't realize how hard those times were on my parents and others. Sounds like it was hard finding a job, and it must have been rough living with your folks. The McD's story made me smile though, and I'm glad you were able to get lunches from the trivia game. I'm glad you are in a better place now. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
Kathy you are welcome
DeleteKim, your life story was very interesting to read. People will learn from your mistakes and that is a good thing. One of the biggest problems we had was, even though we worked full time, was not earning enough money, which came with its own struggles. My ex dh owed the IRS money and we paid on that debt for years. But I found The Tightwad Gazette in the early 1990s and learned so much from her. It changed my life. We are debt free now and very thankful. We work hard to keep it that way too.
ReplyDeleteI think ours was losing Franka and having 80,000 dollars in medical debt. We should have declared bankruptcy instead of trying to pay off and paying off the $40,000 that was not forgiven.
DeleteThank you for sharing your story Kim.
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome Lori, just living the dream!
DeleteI enjoyed reading your life story. Ex husband, in addition to his side chicks, is bipolar and a compulsive spender. Also has anger issues. Fun times. He makes a lot of money but spends like there is no tomorrow. We are friendly tho when he is not in one of his mean moods. I mostly avoid him tho. and talk through text maybe once a month. When he was hospitalized and had surgery in January, I took care of ex and brought him home from hospital bc I didn’t want the one kid he talks to the most, to interrupt his grueling school to deal with his difficult dad. Ex then ghosted me when better….Lol. Thank goodness my mom helped me with the kids when they were young. I am partially retired but still working, a lot. I guess I will quit when I quit. I am just not ready to quit. I have no idea when I will feel ready. Cindy in the South
ReplyDeleteThat is too bad Cindy, especially in our faith where we are taught that the man is all that! SO many of them are a huge disappointment. I am happy you have your career, and you are an example to other women who need to get out.
ReplyDeleteHe is Catholic not LDS. I married outside the church. Cindy in the South
DeleteThis is not to diss any other religion either. I was just explaining to Kim I married outside of our shared faith. She knew what I meant but it may have sounded odd to others and I didn’t want my comment to be misinterpreted. Cindy in the South
DeleteThanks for the fascinating back story.
ReplyDelete